You don't want to vacuum as if it were not planted. lightly skim over the substrate, but don't push your syphon down in the gravel. Especially not near your plants. You'd be possibly damaging roots and taking away their nutrients.

Have you figured out your lighting routine yet? How long are they running?

Thanks for the advice on vacuuming

As for lights, they are running about 8.5 hours a day right now. Plants are growing, but some are riddled with algae. Checked phosphates today for 1st time to find they are at .5 and have gotten mixed reviews. Some sites say I should have more than that in a planted tank, others say I should have zero an recommend finding food that doesn't have any phosphate content at all. I'm at a loss on how to stop the algae.